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WASHINGTON — An outbreak of one of the most contagious animal diseases from any of five locations the White House is considering for a new high-security research laboratory would be more devastating to the U.S. economy than from the isolated island laboratory where such research is now conducted, says a report published Friday.

The 1,005-page Homeland Security Department study said chances of such an outbreak — with estimated losses of more than $4.2 billion - - would be “extremely low” if the research lab were designed, constructed and operated according to government safety standards.

Still, it calculated that economic losses in an outbreak of foot- and-mouth disease could surpass $4 billion if the lab were built near livestock herds in Kansas or Texas, two options the Bush administration is considering. That would be nearly $1 billion higher than the government’s estimate of losses blamed on a hypothetical outbreak from its existing laboratory on Plum Island, N.Y.

The administration is studying the safest place to move its research on such dangerous pathogens from Plum Island to the U.S. mainland near herds of livestock, raising concerns about a catastrophic outbreak. A final choice is expected by late fall. The foot-and-mouth virus does not infect humans but could devastate herds of cattle, swine, lambs and sheep.

The five locations the U.S. is considering are Athens, Ga.; Manhattan, Kan.; Butner, N.C.; San Antonio; and Flora, Miss. A sixth alternative would be construction of a new research lab on Plum Island. That option is considered less likely because the administration spent considerable time and money scouting new locations and because of financial concerns about operating from a location accessible only by ferry or helicopter.

Economic losses in an outbreak would exceed $3.3 billion if the new lab were built in Georgia, North Carolina or Mississippi, the report said.

The Homeland Security official in charge of the study, Jamie Johnson of the Office of National Laboratories, said it sought to identify specific risks to each candidate location.

“What the EIS (environmental impact statement) concludes is that the likelihood of release of foot-and-mouth disease is extremely low,” he said. “However, in the event that foot-and-mouth does get out, what does that mean to these sites?”

The new study concludes that risk would be low to nonexistent that an accident or terrorist attack would result in the outbreak of a dangerous pathogen at any of the sites except in case of a fire and explosion. Such a fire and explosion would pose a moderate risk that virus or disease could spread to nearby livestock or wild animals.

The threat from fire and explosion would be diminished for the government’s isolated laboratory on Plum Island “due to the low likelihood of any disease getting off of the island,” the report said.

The new National Bio-and Agro-Defense Facility would replace the existing 24-acre research complex on Plum Island, which is about 100 miles northeast of New York City in the Long Island Sound. Besides foot-and-mouth disease, researchers also would study African swine fever, Japanese encephalitis, Rift Valley fever and the Hendra and Nipah viruses. Construction would begin in 2010 and take four years.

The new study expresses the government’s confidence it could avoid any outbreak. But it also cautioned that, “should a large release occur there is considerable opportunity for the virus to cause infections and become established in the environment beyond the facility boundary.”

A simulated outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease — part of an earlier U.S. government exercise called “Crimson Sky” — ended with fictional riots in the streets after the simulation’s National Guardsmen were ordered to kill tens of millions of farm animals, so many that troops ran out of bullets. In the exercise, the government said it would have been forced to dig a ditch in Kansas 25 miles long to bury carcasses.

The new study said U.S. economic losses from an outbreak could ultimately be higher than the $5 billion suffered by Britain in 2001, when an epidemic forced the government to slaughter 6 million sheep, cows and pigs.

Copyright C 2008 Deseret News Publishing Co.
Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved.

Information provided by: Findarticles.com

By Tim Carpenter

THE CAPITAL-JOURNAL

A draft federal environmental report Friday on potential locations for the National Bio- and Agro-Defense Facility contained no revelations that would undermine a bid by Kansas State University, state officials said.

“There is no one issue where Kansas failed,” said Tom Thornton, president and chief executive of the Kansas Bioscience Authority. “There’s nothing hiding in the woods.”

Other finalists for the high-security laboratory are Athens, Ga., Butner, N.C., Flora, Miss., and San Antonio. It is possible the federal government could locate NBAF near its existing complex on Plum Island, N.Y., but Thornton said his quick reading of the report makes that unlikely.

The 1,000-page report released by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security estimated that escape from the proposed $450 million NBAF laboratory of a toxic virus - highly contagious foot-and-mouth disease, for example - could have the most severe economic repercussion in Kansas. The state is a national leader in cattle production, and some critics suggested it was folly to build the laboratory in the middle of cattle country.

A computer analysis of the five mainland sites under consideration and the existing complex at Plum Island indicated outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease would produce a high of $4.2 billion in economic losses in Kansas and a low of $2.8 billion on Plum Island.

Damage in Georgia, North Carolina and Mississippi could exceed $3.3 billion, and the carnage in Texas could top $4 billion, the report says.

Jerry Jaax, associate vice president for research compliance at Kansas State, said the report released by Homeland Security confirmed release of live pathogens from the containment system planned for NBAF was a remote possibility. He said design of the research complex, with redundant security features, and the incorporation of sophisticated equipment and a highly trained staff would mitigate the threat of catastrophic outbreak.

The new research laboratory also would incorporate studies on Rift Valley fever, the Hendra and Nipah viruses, African swine fever, and Japanese encephalitis.

Homeland Security is coordinating selection of a host for NBAF, which would become the epicenter of U.S. research on animal diseases, including some capable of migrating from livestock to humans. The existing federal laboratory on Plum Island is about 50 years old and too small to accommodate growth of research programs.

“By expanding and modernizing our ability to develop advanced test and evaluation capabilities and vaccine countermeasures for these types of diseases, we protect not only our nation’s security but also the vibrancy of our agriculture system,” said Jay Cohen, undersecretary for science and technology at Homeland Security.

Two meetings are scheduled in Manhattan to gather public comment on the preliminary environmental report. The sessions will be July 31 from 12:30 to 4:30 p.m. and from 6 to 10 p.m. at the Kansas State student union. Each will include an open house followed by a presentation on the report and public comment.

Homeland Security’s process for picking a site for NBAF is several weeks behind schedule, said Ron Trewyn, vice president for research at Kansas State. He said the final environmental report would be released prior to selection of a site, which is now anticipated to occur in November.

The decision will be based on a portfolio of criteria that goes beyond environmental concerns, Thornton said. A site’s potential for collaborative research with other laboratories and the cost of construction and operation at each site will play a significant role in the outcome of the competition, he said.

Lobbying among finalists is expected to reach a fever pitch.

“We’ve got to be real aggressive,” Thornton said.

According to Homeland Security’s analysis, the construction alone would create 1,300 to 1,600 jobs, up to $183 million in labor income, and as much as $24 million in state and local taxes. Operation of NBAF would directly foster 250 to 350 permanent jobs. Construction is expected to begin in 2010 and take about four years.

Tim Carpenter can be reached

at (785) 295-1158 or

timothy.carpenter@cjonline.com.

Copyright 2008
Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved.

Information provided by: Findarticles.com

It all started with gunfire. A cannon, in fact. The entire assembled company, including the huge panel of dignitaries lined up at a long, long table in front of us, leapt out of their skins. It continued, rather less dramatically, with speeches. Long, rambling speeches, all in punctilious prose, full of rhetorical flourishes and peppered with praise for the gentili signori and eminent officials packed into the room.

We were there, in a magnificent Gothic palazzo which used to be an Anglican church, to celebrate a “paradise for exiles” - and two of the most eminent ones, Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning. The “paradise for exiles” was the Tuscan spa town of Bagni di Lucca. Known as “the Switzerland of Tuscany”, it was once a green and more than pleasant hillside haven for Byron and Shelley as well as the Brownings, and for Strauss, Listz, Puccini, politicians, saints and popes.

The biggest moment of excitement, perhaps, was when a meandering treatise on “The Brownings’ friends at Bagni di Lucca” was interrupted by an extremely loud and wacky ring-tone. A bored- looking man dressed as a medieval peasant fumbled around in his pocket and nipped behind the giant flag he was holding to answer it. The second was when somebody unearthed a recording, made at a dinner party in 1889, of Browning reciting his poem “How They Brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix”. “And into the midnight we galloped abreast,” he intones, in an alarmingly high voice, before breaking off and declaring, “I’m sorry, but I can’t remember me own verses.” The other guests join in with a rousing “Bravo! Hip, hip, hooray!”.

If Italy was ever a “paradise for exiles”, it certainly isn’t now. Well, perhaps for the Brits who still pursue their olive- growing on Tuscan hillside fantasies (if they can stomach the bureaucracy) and for those, like me, who still find an annual dose of food, frescoes and sun-drenched fields and cypresses a balm for the soul. For the Africans selling their fake bags and sunglasses in Pisa and Florence, often living 10 to a room, and who spend their working day being swatted away like flies, it isn’t, or for the eastern Europeans who have come seeking work, or for the Romany population that has lived there for centuries.

On the first day of my holiday, headlines in local and national papers screamed about the crime wave unleashed by the immigranti. One lone voice, a Roma academic and musician called Santino Spinelli, who survived as a child by begging on the streets, and whose family has lived in Italy for 600 years, was wheeled out to defend his (dirty, thieving, parasitic) community. On the TV chat show I saw (hosted, as always, by a pneumatic young woman with the make-up of a drag queen), he was treated with the kind of contempt you might reserve for, say, a prime minister who bought his way out of trouble by changing the law, or one who monopolised the media as a way into high office. (Later that night, the TV channel dropped its tedious discussion, and clothes, for a relaxing session, with three silicone-breasted women with shaved pubes, in a shower.)

In my local bar the next day, I asked the lesbian couple who run it (who you might expect, for obvious reasons, not to be the greatest supporters of Italian conservatism) what they made of it. “Grande problema,” they said, and I smiled with relief, but then it turned out that the “grande problema” was not anti-immigrant hysteria, but the immigrants themselves. Stealing our jobs, our possessions, our country was the general tenor of nearly all the discussions I had over the next fortnight.

Even my Ivorian-Italian friend, who came to Italy as a penniless political refugee 18 years ago, and who now makes a good living as a truck driver, told me to lock my door at night. “Albanesi,” he said grimly, when I asked why. Yup, the Albanians are roaming the Tuscan countryside in search of Rough Guides and bikinis. And Berlusconi? “Speriamo!” said nearly everyone I asked. Let us hope.

Hope surged for me when I finally met a young man at the Browning conference who had radical views about Italian culture. He worked in Rome for an American bank. He wanted to start a colony for artists. He agreed that Italy was locked in the past and that the carapace of its hidebound heritage needed to be chipped away.

I made a joke about the aesthetic qualities of the female members (beauty queen, etc) of Berlusconi’s cabinet. “Are you suggesting?” he asked icily, “that they aren’t qualified for their roles?” Berlusconi, he added, after a little lecture on the importance of presentation, was “the best thing that had happened to Italy for years”.

This week, the editor of Italian Vogue, Franca Sozzani, has unveiled an all-black issue. Brave, brave girl. It will, however, take more than that to stop the vicious virus sweeping this once- beautiful country, a virus fed and financed by Italy’s Sugar Daddy and patriarch.

I doubt he has read Elizabeth Barrett Browning, but I wish he would. “Nationality is excellent in its place,” she said, of Italy nearly 150 years ago, “and the instinct of self-love is the root of a man, which will develop into sacrificial virtues. But … if we hinder their tendency to use growth and expansion, we both destroy them as virtues, and degrade them to that rankest species of corruption.”

Information provided by: Findarticles.com

Parental fears over MMR jabs have aided spread of disease

Measles has become endemic in Britain, 14 years after its spread was halted in the resident population, the country’s public health watchdog says.

The Health Protection Agency (HPA) warned that the number of unvaccinated children was now large enough to sustain the “continuous spread” of the potentially lethal virus in the community. It blamed a failure by parents over the past 10 years to give their children the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine.

This has resulted in vaccine rates falling below the level necessary to prevent the disease becoming established in the general population.

Figures published yesterday show cases of measles in London reached a new peak last month, exceeding last year’s monthly record set in August 2007, and are continuing to rise.

There were 95 cases confirmed in the capital and 35 in the rest of England and Wales bringing the total for the year to 461. A 17- year-old victim from West Yorkshire died from the disease in the first fatality since 2006. In another case a doctor working in a hospital cancer ward contracted measles prompting the Department of Health to write to all hospitals telling them to ensure that all staff working with vulnerable patients have documented immunity to the disease.

Measles causes fever, and can have serious complications including pneumonia and encephalitis (swelling of the brain). Fifty years ago the illness killed 500 children a year in the UK but vaccination almost eliminated the disease. Last month’s death was only the second in more than a decade.

The HPA, which published the latest figures in its weekly report, said the rise in measles cases in London was linked to an outbreak at a secondary school which had spread to neighbouring schools and nurseries in the capital. It was also the source of clusters in Cornwall and South Yorkshire.

The report said: “Due to almost 10 years of sub-optimal MMR vaccination coverage across the UK, the number of children susceptible to measles is now sufficient to support the continuous spread of measles.

“Health services should exploit all possible opportunities to offer MMR vaccine to children of any age who have not received two doses. Greater awareness of the increasing measles incidence by health professionals and the public is essential to control the spread of infection.”

Elizabeth Miller, head of immunisation at the HPA, said: “In 1994 we interrupted the spread of measles in the UK so that it ceased to be endemic. Since that time the only cases we have had have been as a result of importation and spread from those imported cases. Now we have reached a point where there are a sufficient number of susceptible [unvaccinated] children in the population to sustain spread of the disease. We are concerned there may be a return to pre- 1994 levels where there was sustained spread. It is quite disturbing.”

Vaccination rates against MMR vary widely across the country and are especially low in London. In the last quarter of 2007, the rate stood at 71 per cent for children at age two (first dose) and 50 per cent at age five (second dose) compared with the 95 per cent coverage needed to maintain herd immunity and prevent endemic spread.

Nationally, vaccination rates against MMR fell from 92 per cent a decade ago to 79 per cent in 2004, at the height of the scare over the vaccine’s supposed link with autism. They have since recovered to 84 per cent at age two (75 per cent at age five) but are still well below the target level of 95 per cent.

Professor Miller said: “Vaccination rates are on the increase but we have the problem of the legacy of the unvaccinated children over the past six or seven years. People do need to realise that measles is a highly infectious disease and if your child is not vaccinated and exposed to the virus there is a high probability that it will find susceptible children.”

Measles was the single most lethal infectious agent in the world until a vaccine was developed in 1963. In the early 1960s, the disease claimed six million lives yearly in the developing world with about 135 million cases. Today the global death toll has been cut to below 350,000 and the World Health Organisation believes it may be possible to eliminate the disease.

In the UK, cases fluctuated between 160,000 and 800,000 during the 1950s and 1960s, with an epidemic every two years, until the measles vaccine was launched in 1970. In 1987, the year before it was superseded by the triple MMR jab, there were 86,000 cases of measles. Vaccination rates against MMR rose to 92 per cent in the early 1990s and the annual number of measles cases fell. But confidence in the vaccine was dashed by publication of a paper in The Lancet in 1998 by Andrew Wakefield and colleagues from the Royal Free Hospital, linking the jab with autism.

Controversy over the link continued for eight years but is now widely accepted to be without substance. Dr Wakefield and two of his former colleagues have been charged with serious professional misconduct over their research in a case before the General Medical Council which is expected to conclude later this year.

Information provided by: Findarticles.com

SEOUL (AFP) — After weeks of tumultuous protests inspired largely by South Korea’s netizens, the country which claims to be the world’s most wired society is considering new ways to monitor the Internet.

Embattled President Lee Myung-Bak highlighted both the benefits and dangers of the web when he addressed a meeting last week on the future of the Internet economy.

Lee, grappling with IT-inspired mass protests over his decision to resume US beef imports, called for the Internet to “be a space of trust”.

“Otherwise, the force of the Internet could turn out to be venomous rather than beneficial,” he said, noting increasing damage from computer viruses, hacking, cyber terrorism and the leak of personal information.

“In particular, spam mail sent under the guise of anonymity and the spread of falsehoods and inaccurate information are threatening even rationality and trust,” said Lee, who did not mention …

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